Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic analyst of voting trends, wrote the book on the core issue in the endgame of the party’s nomination fight. Its title is “America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters.”
Actually, he is not.
Mr. Obama, who leads the delegate count, “is clocking in where he needs to be” with white, working-class voters to win the White House in November, Mr. Teixeira said.
Through most of the primaries, the constituencies supporting either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama have remained remarkably stable. While Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has energized young, African-American and affluent voters, his rival from New York has dominated among women, Hispanics, blue-collar whites and older voters.
Among white, working-class voters — most commonly identified as those without a college degree — Mrs. Clinton has won by 2 to 1 or better in states like Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama has fared better among less culturally conservative working-class whites in states like Oregon, where the environment is a central issue for voters. Still, Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she is best positioned to win the “hard-working Americans, white Americans” has become the linchpin of her argument that she is more electable than Mr. Obama.
But Mr. Teixeira, who is not backing either candidate, does not buy that argument. He dismisses intraparty contests as “pretty poor evidence” of whether Mr. Obama, as the Democratic nominee, could attract the blue-collar support he would need against Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.
No Majority Needed
And how much blue-collar support would Mr. Obama need? Not a majority, said Mr. Teixeira. Though blue-collar Democrats once represented a centerpiece of the New Deal coalition, they have shrunk as a proportion of the information age-economy and as a proportion of the Democratic base.
Al Gore lost working-class white voters by 17 percentage points in 2000, even while winning the national popular vote. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts lost them by 23 points in 2004, while running within three points of President Bush over all. Mr. Teixeira suggests that Mr. Obama can win the presidency if he comes within 10 to 12 percentage points of Mr. McCain with these voters, as Democratic candidates for the House did in the 2006 midterm election.
In recent national polls, that is exactly what Mr. Obama is doing. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Mr. Obama trailing by 12 percentage points with working-class whites; a poll by Quinnipiac University, showed him trailing by seven points. In each survey, Mr. Obama led over all by seven points.
Democrats learned from Mr. Gore’s Electoral College defeat that national polls are not everything. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers point to states like Florida, where Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. McCain while Mr. Obama lags behind, as evidence that Mr. Obama’s working-class weakness could prove decisive.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, agrees. He said recent focus groups among blue-collar whites in Florida, Michigan and Missouri found “very significant” resistance to Mr. Obama. He attributed that partly to racial attitudes, but more broadly to the cultural distance those voters felt from the liberal, Ivy League-educated candidate.
Help From New Voters
But Mr. Ayres concedes that resistance need not be fatal to Mr. Obama’s candidacy. “The question is whether they’ll be counterbalanced by the new voters and young voters he brings in,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s advisers, and some unaffiliated strategists, acknowledge that he would lose some working-class votes that Mrs. Clinton might receive should she somehow win over enough superdelegates to capture the nomination. But they insist the answer to Mr. Ayres is yes, Mr. Obama would attract other voters to offset those losses.
In two states where Mrs. Clinton swamped Mr. Obama among working-class white voters, some recent surveys have shown him leading Mr. McCain. Is working-class resistance in Ohio and Pennsylvania going to be enough to prevent Mr. Obama from winning, asks Mark Mellman, an adviser to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other Democratic politicians. “I think the answer is, not.”
Mr. Teixeira argues that Mr. Obama’s standing with working-class whites may be artificially low in the wake of his skirmishing with Mrs. Clinton and the controversy over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
“Yes, he has a problem,” Mr. Teixeira said. “But it’s a solvable problem.”
Susan Eisenhower is more than just another disappointed Republican. She is also Ike's granddaughter and a dedicated member of the party who has urged her fellow Republicans in the past to stick with the GOP. But now Eisenhower, who runs an international consulting firm, is endorsing Barack Obama. She has no plans to officially leave the Republican Party. But in Eisenhower's view, Obama is the only candidate who can build a national consensus on the issues most important to her—energy, global warming, an aging population and America's standing in the world.
"Barack Obama will really be in a singular position to attract moderate Republicans," she told NEWSWEEK. "I wanted to do what many people did for my grandfather in 1952. He was hugely aided in his quest for the presidency by Democrats for Eisenhower. There's a long and fine tradition of crossover voters."
Eisenhower is one of a small but symbolically powerful group of what Obama recently called "Obamacans"—disaffected Republicans who have drifted away from their party just as Eisenhower Democrats did and, more recently, Reagan Democrats in the 1980s. They include lifelong Republican Tricia Moseley, a former staffer for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist from South Carolina. Now a high-school teacher, Moseley says she was attracted to Obama's positions on education and the economy.
Former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, who anchors MSNBC's "Morning Joe," says many conservative friends—including Bush officials and evangelical Christians—sent him enthusiastic e-mails after seeing Obama's post-election speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. "He doesn't attack Republicans, he doesn't attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does]," Scarborough told NEWSWEEK.
Plenty of Republicans are immune to the Obama swoon, of course. The Republican National Committee has emphasized a recent analysis suggesting that Obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate last year. But even small numbers of Obamacans can help reinforce the candidate's unity message and bolster his "electability" argument. In Iowa, the campaign identified more than 700 registered Republicans who committed to caucusing for Obama (although staffers say they don't yet know how many showed up to vote). And in the Super Tuesday state of Colorado, campaign staffers say they found more than 500 erstwhile Republicans who were willing to switch their party registration.
Even if Republicans don't convert in more significant numbers, the friendly outreach may blunt the ferocity of GOP attacks. One senior aide to John McCain has already said he's reluctant to attack Obama: last year, McCain's adman Mark McKinnon wrote an internal memo promising not to tape ads against the Illinois Democrat if he becomes the nominee.
About David Axelrod.....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/01/AR2008050103509.html?hpid=artslot
By Ariel Alexovich
As she kept up to date about the presidential race back home, Meredith Wheeler noticed a recurring theme in the press coverage of Barack Obama, her favorite candidate.
“I kept reading about bridges, bridges, bridges,” said Ms. Wheeler, an American ex-pat living in the small village of Lautrec, in the south of France. ” ‘He bridges gaps. He’s a uniter.’ ”
With that in the back of her mind, an idea came to her “from the ether” at a Democrats Abroad regional meeting in Brussels last March.
Mr. Obama won the Democrats Abroad primary back in February, but Ms. Wheeler still was surprised by how many of her colleagues were outspoken Obama supporters. These Americans, usually just a background presence in their adopted cities, should make their support for him more visible, she thought.
And, symbolically, they should do it on a bridge.Right away the idea took off, Ms. Wheeler said, and the first rally was organized in Vienna in late March.
Susan Vaillant, an ex-pat in Strasbourg, France, raised the bridge project’s hip quotient by dubbing it “Yes We Span” — a play off the Obama campaign motto “Yes We Can.”
So far, bridge rallies have been held all over the world, from the Pont Neuf in Paris, to the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, to the Batavia Drawbridge in Jakarta.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge and Oberbaum Brucke in Berlin will be invaded Saturday, with more events planned later this month.
Another France-based Obama fan, filmmaker Samantha Timmerman, plans on setting a photo montage of the bridge events to music, and submitting it to the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee.
If all goes according to their plan, Democrats back in the States will see the video played at the party convention this summer.
For now, though, the project organizers are pleased with the mixed turnout of Americans and locals they’re getting at local events. The group that gathered at the Pont d’Avignon, in southern France, even changed the words of a classic French children’s song to reflect their message.
To all our Francophile readers, they sang: “Sur le Pont d’Avignon, on y vote, on y vote Obama!” Or, translated: “On the Avignon Bridge, we all vote, we all vote Obama!”
Let's start with a hypothetical situation: Suppose a small group of people controlled the press, and they wanted to ensure a Republican victory in November. A few weeks ago Obama seemed to be riding a wave of inevitability and positive perception. The Democrats seemed to have settled on a candidate, and he scored well against the Republicans because he was seen as post-racial and post-partisan. If this group were to write a memo to the media, what would it say?
Their game plan would have very specific objectives:
1. Extend the Democratic primary race as long as possible.2. Remind the public that the seemingly "post-racial" Obama is a black man; make him seem as scary-black as possible.3. Strengthen Hillary Clinton's image with white working-class voters by making her appear populist, folksy, and one of them. Conversely, characterize Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with "real people."4. Break down Obama's post-partisan appeal to independents and Republicans by linking him to the divisive left/right politics of the 1960s.
Now look back over the media's coverage of the Democratic campaign during the past several weeks. Bingo: Mission accomplished. By giving the primary campaign more of a horse-race feel than it actually has, they've managed to extend it. The Rev. Wright controversy and constant mentions of Louis Farrakhan have made Obama seem more "scary-black." (It should be noted that Clinton has closer political ties to a Farrakhan lover than Obama does. Her PA campaign chair Gov. Ed Rendell said this of him: "His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest... one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience.")
Those images of Hillary doing shots in Pennsylvania were broadcast morning, noon, and night, emphasizing her working-class image. So were images of Obama bowling a gutterball and looking "elitist." And by promoting Obama's alleged "ties" to Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers while downplaying Clinton I's pardon of two fellow Underground members, Obama was made to look more "leftist" than Clinton.
And that's not all, as they say on the late-night ads ...
Now we have the matter of Hillary's difficulty with a coffee machine. This video has gone viral, complete with goofy and irritating music. It shows Sen. Clinton struggling to operate the coffee maker in a gas station. It's become popular among Obama supporters because it shows the allegedly "populist" Hillary's bafflement at operating a device that is familiar to most working Americans. Why is the coffee-machine video so popular among Obama supporters? Because they think it would be airing 24 hours a day if their candidate had made the same mistake.
And it would.
So, is the coffee-machine video getting airplay on the cable news shows? Not really ... well, wait: CNN did run a piece about it, but only to debunk the idea that this means Hillary's out of touch. "These coffee machines ARE finicky sometimes," says reporter Jeanne Moos, "I nearly broke one at the car dealership ..." Yet CNN breathlessly repeated over and over that Obama only scored a 37 while bowling, without reporting that he never finished the game! And there was no Jeanne Moos to say "we all throw gutterballs sometimes."
But, stop already! Isn't this all ridiculous? Isn't it trivial to concern ourselves with whether the next president is able to go bowling or get a cup of coffee from a vending machine? Of course! But the media make us care about these things. They have an enormous ability to influence what we think about, and they've chosen to emphasize the reality-show aspects of this race. Then, having done that, they skew the race in favor of different candidates in a naked display of their ability to influence the outcome. That's the lesson of the bowling incident and the coffee-cup video: One gets exposure and the other doesn't, because the narrative has already been written.
In this particular reality show, they've decided who they want voted off the island next.
So what does this all mean? Is our hypothetical group real? Did instructions come down from on high? The crystal balls are murky. But it's clear that American media outlets are owned by fewer and more powerful interests. And they don't necessarily have to write memos. All they have to do is hire and promote well-intentioned but biased reporters who don't even realize how they're distorting the news. Throw in a couple of cooperative editors, and you've got yourself a "free press" ready to do the bidding of its owners. And most of those owners are Republican.
We know that the right-wing learned how to spin and manipulate the news using outlets like Drudge and Fox. And rather than fight this system, Clinton campaign advisors like Sid Blumenthal decided to exploit it for their own ends. Blumenthal's been circulating the most scurrilous right-wing attacks against Obama to a mix of friends and journalists, and some of his readers have printed them. (Blumenthal's the guy who found the Obama campaign's idealism infuriating; guess we know why now.) And it turns out that Rev. Wright's latest public tirade was orchestrated by ... a Clinton supporter.
But, some Democrats will ask, don't we want people like than running the Democratic campaign? Won't they be more effective at winning? Maybe - but that argument would be more compelling if they weren't losing. If the Clinton campaign wanted to run such a negative campaign, it should have done so from the very beginning. But they were overconfident. By turning ugly now, when they're behind, they're damaging the party. And, ironically, that may be why they're been getting such favorable media treatment lately.
If the media's first job is to cripple or take out Barack Obama, then the Clinton campaign is just a means to that end. Whether Obama yields to Hillary or takes the nomination in a weakened position, the Democrats will have been wounded. And the extended race will have provided months of extra "horse-race" stories for the media.
At that point Blumenthal et al. will find that their usefulness to the media machine has ended and they're yesterday's news. Their tactics won't work any more. Suddenly Clinton will be the target again - and John McCain will be on his way to the Presidency.
Word to Sidney Blumenthal and all the other Rove-emulating Clintonites: You're disposable tools in a bigger game. You guys, of all people, should understand that.
___________
UPDATE: Two alleged statements by Clinton associate Mickey Kantor have been removed from this post. He says he never said the more extreme statement, and there's evidence the video we saw was doctored. So we take him at his word. Another phrase that he used, "these people are sh*t," seemed to refer to Indiana voters but is ambiguous. (Not that ambiguity would stop the press if they were determined to smear a candidate by association, as the Clinton team knows all too well.)
Kantor reportedly asked that the more extreme statement not be repeated, even as a retraction. Fair enough. We've honored that request, and have also removed the other one. We suggest that Clinton and McCain supporters likewise refrain from repeating scurrilous and false remarks about their opponents in the future, even if only to deny that they believe them.
Having lost the national elected delegate race, Hillary Clinton now wants to count the popular vote from Michigan in her campaign's efforts to change the rules of the nomination race. It's a fraudulent argument as the Michigan primary ballot did not offer Democrats real candidate choices.
Here is what actually happened. The four top tier Democratic candidates -- Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Clinton -- all pledged to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) they would not campaign in Michigan, after the DNC ruled that Michigan's delegates would not be seated at the national convention because Michigan changed its primary date from February 26 to January 15.
Obama, Edwards and Richardson kept their pledge and removed their names from the ballot. At the last minute, Clinton left her name on the ballot, with the full knowledge that the results would not count. Obama, Edwards and Richardson complied with the rules, while Clinton did not keep her pledge.
Although there was no other viable candidate's name on the primary ballot, only 55 percent voted for Clinton. Instead --
Michigan primary history had previously established a precedent for the 2008 situation. During the contested presidential primary of 1980, the DNC ruled that Michigan delegates would not be seated at the convention because the state was holding an open primary not recognized at that time by party rules. President Jimmy Carter and his challenger, Senator Edward Kennedy both kept their names off the ballot -- they honored the rules.
Clinton did not follow the precedent set by Carter and Kennedy. Instead, the Clinton campaign tried to claim Michigan delegates that were not earned competitively. When that gambit failed, Clinton began counting the popular vote in Michigan as part of her national total.
The facts associated with the Michigan Democratic primary make it clear that Michigan voters were disenfranchised by the election. As a result, the primary vote cannot be considered an honest and valid measurement of the support for any Democratic candidate in Michigan.
Perhaps a fitting postscript can be found in a recent Michigan poll by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA. In that highly respected poll, Obama led McCain 43-41 percent, while McCain led Clinton 46-37 percent. Obama was running a full 11 percentage points better than Clinton in Michigan -- when matched against McCain.
If Michigan had not moved up its original primary date of February 26, a vigorous and fair democratic primary election campaign in Michigan could have taken place. Then the real voice of Michigan Democratic voters would have been heard. Anll the current evidence indicates that the voters' choice would have been Barack Obama -- not Hillary Clinton.
A beautiful essay.....
Hillary Clinton and John McCain should be careful what they ask for from the Rev. Wright controversy. Surrogates for their campaigns are still, even after Barack Obama's clear denunciation of Rev. Wright on Tuesday, accusing him of bad judgment for not doing it sooner, and, implicitly, of doing it out of political calculation. His opponents see hypocrisy in the contradiction between that calculation and Obama's call for a new kind of politics, but in the process they are inviting a kind of examination of their own campaigns that Obama's is better prepared to withstand.
Contrary to the popular image painted of him in the media, Obama actually seems to be the only one of the three Presidential candidates who does not defiantly hold himself above moral imperfection, and who, ironically, likely seems aloof to his critics precisely because he is the most at peace with his own flawed humanity.
Just before the Pennsylvania primary, John Stewart asked Barack Obama where he stood in the state polls, and he said, "We're down about seven or eight percent," which was exactly what the pollsters had been reporting. It was a tiny example, but still after all this time, an astonishing one to me, of Obama's comfortableness with honesty, and a reminder of how uncomfortable that seems to make his opponents. Obama had this to say about his own negative campaigning:
"This campaign isn't perfect, I'm not perfect. People start throwing elbows at you and you've got to throw an elbow back. I know this happened the last several weeks, I told this to my team, 'We are starting to sound like the other folks.'"
Obama is doing something the other candidates seem to never do, something that is at the heart of his appeal to so many people, and of the unsettling effect he has on others-- admitting a moral failure.
He didn't blame his mistakes on lack of sleep. He didn't deny he'd said something he'd said. Commentators have fallen into the habit of describing Obama as being in a predicament of his own making, trapped between impossible-to-meet, self-imposed standards of moral purity on the one hand and the demands of rough-and-tumble politics on the other. But they are making a mistake of perception born of the very habits that are the object Obama's true critique, and completely misreading the source of his popularity. Obama's supporters aren't excited by the possibility of a future when, as Hillary mockingly put it, "The heavens will open and everything will be perfect." They are optimistic about a future when specious, insincere, sentimental ideals might be nudged out of our politics a little bit by a politician brave enough to sometimes concern himself with not just moralism, but morality. Sometimes even his own.
Yet, while his opponents respond to criticism with high dudgeon and desperate evasion, and he routinely cops to his own failings, Obama is the candidate people most often see as being "above it all." This is not entirely a misperception. It's just that what Obama is trying to hold himself above isn't moral imperfection but moral pretense, which can be confusing at a time when politics is all about shot-and-a-beer charades and flags-of-our-father's puffery.
The ethical gulf between Hillary Clinton's decision to vote for an inexcusable and horrific war and Obama's decision to attend a church run by an at times angry and buffoonish pastor is enormous, yet Obama reflected thoughtfully and authentically on his own mistakes (as well as Rev. Wright's,) in his Philadelphia speech, and forcefully denounced Wright's offensive statements. Even more impressively, with little political gain to be had, and at a moment of great political pressure, he stayed true to his own sense of morality and refused to repudiate Rev. Wright himself. And now, weeks later, he's been forced to completely reject his former pastor, and has done so with clarity and real feeling.
Meanwhile, Clinton has yet to address her vote on the war in any meaningful way, let alone show signs of examining it or learning from it. Instead she's lectured her critics and opponents, waving campaign leaflets the way her husband wags his finger, with hectoring calls for Obama, the one who's supposed to be so full of moral superiority, to be "ashamed of himself."
But it is precisely Obama's resistance to the screeching demands of our inflated and hysterical political culture, and his struggle to stay as true to himself as he can while doing so, that has captured the hearts of so many people. The other candidates, and many journalists, seem to think that Obama has gotten himself in trouble because he's not doing what he should to "win," that he isn't "fighting" enough, but they don't see that he isn't trying to win the same thing they are, and that he's fighting on a different front. What really bothers them about Barack Obama isn't that he doesn't care about winning, it's that he's willing to lose. While Hillary Clinton has kept as her motto her husband's triangulationist admonishment, "First you have to win elections," one gets the sense that Obama might be more inclined to heed Abraham Lincoln's advice, "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
I can only imagine what goes through Hillary Clinton's mind as she watches Obama not allow himself to be shamed into wearing an American flag pin. "What, is he crazy? He has nothing to lose by wearing a pin! What an idiot! I sponsored an anti-flag burning bill, for God sake! It's a no-brainer!" Clinton and her husband long ago cultivated an image of themselves as tenacious warriors willing to meet the enemy with inexhaustible ferocity. But it's become clear to many of their former supporters during this campaign that their enemy isn't who we thought it was, that it is in fact anyone and anything that gets in the way of The Clintons.
The only thing Hillary Clinton, or John McCain for that matter, ever seems to worry about being true to is their ambitions. I've yet to see either of them respond to any challenge with the politically inexpedient, centered, self-knowledge Obama displays in even something as small the flag pin question. Hillary responded to campaign director Mark Penn's paid advocacy of trade with Colombia and support of questionable military efforts there by "firing" him without firing him, and with obfuscation far more worthy of the accusations of arrogance she routinely aims at Obama. Yet Reverend Wright, who has been completely shut out of the Obama campaign from the beginning, is still a hot-button issue and somehow Mark Penn, still employed by the Clinton campaign, is not. Obama seems genuinely troubled by Wright's words, and the course their relationship has taken, while Clinton only seems bothered by Penn's clumsiness.
Hillary seems much more uncomfortable when challenged than Obama does (remember her complaints about being "ganged up on" by debate opponents, or her tantrum-like insistence in another debate that she "doesn't just want change, [she's] been working for change for thirty five years!") Yet she has accused Obama of not being able to "take the heat," because he pointed out the lack of substance in recent debate questions.
Her great strengths are supposed to be her experience and political acumen, but, more than a decade after letting her health care initiative be characterized as socialism, and trying to jam it down the throats of everyone in Washington, this supposedly super-savvy politician has returned to the battle with a plan whose centerpiece is government mandates. Her words. How in the world has she earned a reputation for political deftness? And if experience is her great virtue, why does she seem to take every slight personally, and lurch from one reactive extreme to another? What is experience for if not to temper us?
It seems to me that Barack Obama has been winning this campaign, and is sometimes in trouble, because he doesn't have the other candidate's habits of resistance to their own morally imperfect humanity. He's living and dying by his rejection of the rictus smiles and Stepford eyes (and yes, flag pins) of old-style politics. What he's above, in fact, is the Clinton style of "being above it all." The sneering and gloating, the thin-skinned over-reactions, the serrated nastiness of, "As far as I know" qualifications, bald-faced "Playing the race card" attacks, and red-faced, lying admonishments afterwards: these things are the stuff of being "above it all," of being above messy things like empathy, and friendship, and self-doubt.
There's nothing wrong with being above lying about war.
There's something very troubling, however, about the air both Clinton and McCain give off of being above responsibility to their own selves. Neither ever gives off a hint of genuinely wrestling with the demands of their own inner lives.
The Obama campaign will probably succeed, and it may fail, but I get the sense that it won't stop for a very long time. The seeking-the-Presidency part will have to end of course, one way or another. But from the beginning, Obama has campaigned, ironically enough, it must be said, at this very churchy moment of the process, in an almost Buddhist-like fashion. He has seemed to have a sense of how the way in which each of us, as individuals, responds to challenges in our lives makes the difference between perpetuating a culture of small-mindedness, recrimination and violence, or winning in the most important way. He is setting an example that helps others move toward a new political culture of self-awareness and compassion. Even if it's only by taking a couple of imperfect baby steps.
Obama seems to have an intuitive sense that the world will begin to change when each of us, one by one, begins to work for peace at the level of our own behavior, our own habits of thought and action. With all the yelling and screaming going on around him, Barack Obama seems peaceful, comfortable in his own skin, and not at all afraid to address his own habits of thought. That's why he has attracted supporters who are convinced of the necessity of taking a good honest look at how we treat ourselves, and how we treat others.
http://action.foe.org/pressRelease.jsp?press_release_KEY=367&t=2007_PRESS.dwt
Recently I was part of a group of women who filmed public service announcements for an organization called Women's Voices. Women Vote. The goal of the PSA campaign is to encourage high voter turn-out amongst women, especially single women, 20 million of whom have been known to stay home on Election Day. It is an issue about which I am deeply passionate. However, there have been reports about WVWV which questioned the intention behind my PSA and which candidate I am endorsing for president. For the record, I am proudly supporting Senator Barack Obama.
The news reports came about because there was evidence that an individual or a small group of individuals affiliated with WVWV may have issued misleading robo-calls in North Carolina designed to suppress voter turnout in African American neighborhoods. I find these activities appalling and hope WVWV will immediately disassociate themselves from such individuals and denounce such actions.
I am not affiliated with WVWV in any way other than participating in this PSA campaign, and I debated whether to ask WVWV to pull my PSA from their website. In the end, I realized the message of the PSA is more important than the actions of some its members. Every woman, 18 or older, should exercise their right to vote for the candidate and the issues they believe in. As women, we are a powerful voting bloc. But that does not mean we will automatically align with female candidates.
My spot was set in a replica of the Oval Office and entitled "Who Do You Want in Here?" This was meant as a legitimate question, not to serve as an endorsement for a particular candidate. The PSA was meant to inspire women to vote regardless of their party or their position. The PSA, like me, is not pro-Clinton, but rather pro-women. And yes, you can be both.
Encouraging.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/opinion/03blow.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Interesting........
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/11/183443/678/744/513868
Chuck Hagel is quickly becoming Barack Obama's answer to Joe Lieberman.
The Republican Senator from Nebraska was a political thorn in McCain's side on Tuesday night, repeatedly lavishing praise on the presumptive Democratic candidate and levying major foreign policy criticisms at the GOP nominee and the Republican Party as a whole. At one point, Hagel even urged the Arizona Republican to elevate his campaign discourse to a higher, more honest level.
"We know from past campaigns that presidential candidates will say many things," Hagel said of some of McCain's recent rhetoric, namely his policy on talking to Iran. "But once they have the responsibility to govern the country and lead the world, that difference between what they said and what responsibilities they have to fulfill are vastly different. I'm very upset with John with some of the things he's been saying. And I can't get into the psychoanalysis of it. But I believe that John is smarter than some of the things he is saying. He is, he understands it more. John is a man who reads a lot, he's been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things."
Hagel, speaking to a small gathering at the residence of the Italian ambassador, took umbrage with several positions taken by the McCain campaign, including the Arizona Senator's criticism of Obama for pledging to engage with Iran. Engagement is not, and should not be confused for, capitulation, he argued.
"I never understand how anyone in any realm of civilized discourse could sort through the big issues and challenges and threats and figure out how to deal with those without engaging in some way...."
Hagel then offered a wry tweak of his GOP colleague. "I am confident that if Obama is elected president that is the approach we will take. And my friend John McCain said some other things about that. We'll see, but in my opinion it has to be done. It is essential."
Hagel, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went on to belittle the tendency for some within his own party to disparage those who tout diplomacy. "You take some risks in talking about this," he said, "especially in the Congress, because you can immediately be branded as an appeaser."
And when asked to respond to rumors circulating within political circles that the Bush administration was ginning up the possibility of war with Iran, the Senator even raised the specter of impeachment.
"You've got the power of impeachment, now that is a very defined measure if you are willing to bring charges against the president at all. You can't just say I disagree with him, let's impeach him," said Hagel. An attack on Iran without Congress' consent, he added, "would bring with it... outstanding political consequences, including for the Republican Party."
Finally, he charged that if the preeminent foreign policy objective is to achieve security in Israel and stability within the broader Middle East, then the Bush track -- which McCain has endorsed -- is ill-advised.
"If you engage a world power or a rival, it doesn't mean you agree with them or subscribe with what they believe or you support them in any way," he said. "What it does tell you is that you've got a problem you need to resolve. And you've got to understand the other side and the other side has got to understand you."
Much of Hagel's address, hosted by the Ploughshares Fund, was spent weaving between Obama praise and McCain quips. He urged the media, for example, to focus on important policy issues an "not just why Barack [doesn't] wear flag pins on his lapel."
Asked whether he would be open to serving as Secretary of Defense in a hypothetical Obama administration, Hagel demurred. But in the process, he praised the Illinois Democrat for being open to a bipartisan cabinet.
"Take me out of the equation," he said, "I do think that the next president and Obama has talked about this, and McCain not as much, I think he is going to have to put together a very wide, smart, experienced, credible, bipartisan cabinet. And that is going to be required absolutely."
Long but worth reading....
As a [now formerly] lifelong Republican, a [Goldwater] Conservative, and a former GOP activist, operative and professional campaign manager, now ardently supporting Sen. Barack Obama, I feel that I have the proper perspective from which to advise this audience on how to "sell" Obama to your Republican friends, relatives, and business associates.
There is a large reservoir of discontent among Republicans who are dissatisfied with John McCain as the GOP nominee. As the recent 25% votes against him in the now uncontested primaries indicate, this dissention is far deeper and more persistent than it will be among Clinton Democrats, when the dust settles in August. These votes, and those of other Republicans now disenchanted are ripe for the picking this fall - IF you know how to make the case to these people.
Below the fold I'll try to give several viable talking points which should hold you in good stead with most any Republican you come across, talking politics with between now and the election...
In general, Republican voters dont have the same priorities as Democrats. The reasons YOU support Sen. Obama are most likely NOT the factors on which your Republican associates will make their voting decisions. Dont assume that your 'hot button' issues are necessarily even important to them, nor belittle the priorities they bring to the voting booth.
First, to most Republicans, the cornerstone Democratic issues of "Health Care", "Education", and "Jobs" just dont even register in the top five issues on which they will base their vote. Arguing that Obama will best handle such subjects wont win their vote even if they believe you that he is best on these issues. Moreover, Republicans will generally have less confidence in the government to deliver health care, and more confidence in private schools to deliver education than you will. Dont argue these issues, arguments just harden attitudes; save your breath - just dont go there. You want their actual VOTE, not their nodding agreement on some arcane philosophical issue.
Second, resist the urge to "Bush Bash". While many (even Most) Republicans are no longer enamored with the President, that doesnt mean they are sympathetic with everyone wanting to dump on him, either. They may feel President Bush to have been well intentioned, though blundering; they may have felt events got out of his control, they may even blame the Democratic Congress for his apparent failings. Again, DONT GO THERE. Its not a fight worth having. You dont win VOTES by fighting with people, you win by leading them to the better alternative - from their vantage point, not yours. George W. Bush is not on this ballot, and neither is his Vice President running to succeed him. That "Bush Third Term" drivel just wont cut it in winning Republican votes. Fortunately, with Obama as our candidate, we can make a better, more substantive case than that.
Third, the only really serious, pervasively damaging charge the GOP will make against Obama is the tried-and-true tactic of painting him as a traditional "tax-and-spend-liberal-democrat, squishy-on-national-defense", in the mold of John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, etc. To most Republicans, that's the killer - if they believe it. All other charges and acusations, no matter how scurrilous, are secondary and incidental to that one. If they buy the 'tax-and-spend-liberal' label, they'll believe all the muddier garbage gossip; if they reject that charge as bogus, they'll most likely reject any other labels that may be pinned on him as 'not credible' either. EVEN IF you, in your heart-of-hearts believe we need more taxes and spending, and you pray to your humanistic wiccan goddess every night (j/k) that Obama will bring these things, for the sake of the Polar Bears, keep those wishes to yourself!!! To obtain an Obama VOTE, you are appealing to your Republican friend's existing sensibilities, rather than trying to change them.
You may not agree with the following policy conclusions which led me to cross over for the first time in my life, and vote for Sen. Obama in Virginia's open primary, but THEY DID. And these same issues will resonate with other Republicans in voting booths across the country this fall...
1. TAXES. As a member of the Illinois State Senate, Sen. Obama was cosponsor of a bill which ultimately passed, creating the largest tax cut in state history. Since the start of his presidential campaign, he has consistently favored a broad-based middle class tax cut. By contrast, Sen. McCain "voted against tax cuts before he voted for them", and has no real credibility on this issue among conservatives. McCain was very critical of the Bush tax cuts, which most Republicans believe gave us years of prosperity - until very recently. Obama can thus be taken more seriously than McCain as a President who will cut taxes, rather than raise them.
2. SPENDING. Most Republicans' biggest gripe with their own party - by far - is its failure to control the bureaucracy and reign in runaway federal spending and deficits. It is useful to mention that while the last five (5) Republican Presidents promised fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, all of them grew discretionary civilian spending by tremendous amounts, and ran up ever larger deficits. Meanwhile, only Pres. Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget, and produced four years of surpluses, with the same forecast long into the indefinite future. A big problem with the federal budget is that almost nobody knows where all the money is going; its easy to add earmarks and pork barrel spending and special interest giveaways when the people back home cant tell the difference. Sen. Barack Obama's major legislative accomplishment in the Senate, the The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 has been to bring transparency to federal spending. Send your Republican friends to http://www.federalspending.gov which his legislation created, a veritable "Google of the Federal Budget", where anyone can research every dollar to see where their tax money is actually going. The whole Federal Rathole is now online, for the first time ever, inviting scrutiny from whoever has the patience to slog through it all. You dont have to be a CPA to realize that this does more in the long run to control wasteful federal spending than all the speeches Bush, Bush, Reagan, Ford, and Nixon ever gave on the subject, put together.
3. BIG GOVERNMENT. In his North Carolina victory speech, among other things, Sen. Obama uttered the words "We dont need Big Government". Whether you agree with that or not, remind your Republican friends that Pres. Bill Clinton's National Performance Review reduced the federal civilian workforce by 250,000 positions (ones they will consider, rightly or wrongly, to be useless tax-sucking bureaucrats). This makes the last Democratic administration the only presidency since Eisenhower's to leave office with a smaller federal workforce that he started with - again, Bush, Bush, Reagan, Ford, and Nixon notwithstanding. But, the real stones Obama brings to the table on this issue are his formative years on the south side of Chicago, doing meaningful community social work through voluntary, faith-based, non-governmental community organizations, rather than government bureaucracies. Yes, We CAN - rehabilitate the homeless, educate the illiterate, provide day care for single moms, dry out alcoholics, and clean junkies off the dope without buidling perpetual bureaucracies - Obama himself has proven that, through social entrepreneurship. By contrast, John McCain has never drawn a day's pay that didnt come from the public trough, courtesy of your tax dollars (getting fabulously rich by marrying an heiress or taking money under the table from special interests he did favors for doesnt count as 'earning money in the productive sector').
4. PERSONAL LIBERTY. Barry Goldwater must be rolling over in his grave over what debasements of the U.S. Constitution the Bush Administration has gotten itself into, and which the man who took his seat in the U.S. Senate, John McCain now ardently defends. Warrantless domestic wiretapping, warrantless searches and seizures, arresting U.S. citizens without probable cause, holding them without trial, etc., etc....No REAL conservative believes these things are legitimate perrogatives of the federal government. There are innumerable horror stories you can research and recount of how the GOP has sat idly by while our cherished Constitutional protections have been ignored, abrogated, and turned into a joke. The last thing real conservatives want is the Orwellian Police State we're presently heading for. Grassroots Republicans dont necessarily trust the feds any more than you do. Thats a case you can make - and make stick - with them.
5. NATIONAL SECURITY. To the rejoinder, "yes, but its worked, we havent been attacked since 9/11", you must add: "BUT, we havent foreclosed the threat by taking out al Queada, either". The National Security argument is like the Tax-and-Spend one, it doesnt matter where you stand on "bombing al Queada back to the stone age" - the fact remains that your Republican friends will vote for the candidate they perceive to be most in tune with that idea, period. McCain vocally disagrees with the successful CIA program to take out al Queada leadership when located in northwest Pakistan, without alerting the local tribal authorities and Pakistani Intelligence, who have always warned off our targets in the past. Sen. Obama, by contrast, opposes giving al Queada sanctuary in Pakistan, and ardently supports this initiative. When McCain attacked Obama as niave for "wanting to bomb an ally", the very next day the CIA took out the #3 leader in al Queada with just such a raid, with a missile fired from a Predator drone. Coddling Pakistan's corrupt dictator for these eight years hasnt made us safer, and John McCain's simplistic continuation of this weak policy is just being Soft on Terrorism, no way around it. Also, its worth noting that whatever other implications it may have for John McCain's Character, Psyche, or Mental Makeup, having a plane shot out from under you and spending six years behind bars does not automatically qualify anyone as a "national security expert"; that notion is just ludicrous on the face of it.
6. OPPORTUNITY. While John McCain's four-star Admiral father ensured him a prized appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, his performance - 894th out of 899 cadets in his class - does not attest to diligent effort, whereas Barack Obama (from a broken home, on food stamps) won competitive academic scholarships to Harvard, which he proved himself worthy of by graduating Magna Cum Laude ("With Highest Honors"). Its been a long time since any politicians of either party could talk convincingly about "The American Dream", but Barack Obama can, because he lived it. Without handouts, family patronage, or inheritence, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps from the Chicago ghetto through his own hard work, enterprise, and initiative to become President of the Harvard Law Review, one of the most prestigious scholarly legal journals in the country. Which President is more likely to make a difference in the lives of people, and motivate them with initiative to best achieve their individual God-given potential?
Those are the issues that real, hard-core Republicans think about when they vote for a president. Talk TO them - not past them with vague, touchy-feely bleeding heart nonsense they wont understand or agree with - and you might very likely ring up another VOTE for Barack Obama this fall. Getting your friends VOTE is all that matters, not winning their hearts to any grander philosophical cause; that just wont happen, so forget it. Make common cause between your GOP acquaintences and Sen. Obama, even if its on points you, yourself, disagree with. THAT'S HOW YOU WILL WIN THIS ELECTION FOR OBAMA.
Once you wash that "tax-and-spend liberal, squishy-on-national-security" label away, none of the other, lesser acusations the Karl Roves and Rush Limbaughs of this world can make against Obama will stick, either. All other things thus being equal, the younger, more intelligent, more dynamic, less "Washington Establishment", less 'tainted-by-special-interest-money' candidate should prevail. Even among Republicans...
Really nice read....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/politics/18memoirs.html?_r=2&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
But Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a self-described “Scots-Irish hillbilly”, may just be the man to make Barack Obama’s White House dreams come true.
The Democratic presidential frontrunner suffered another landslide defeat to Hillary Clinton last week in the Kentucky primary, further proof of his failure to win over working class white voters in the Appalachian mountain region, whose support he will need if he is to beat Republican John McCain in November’s election.
Mr Obama has lost the hill country vote to Mrs Clinton by wide margins in a swathe of states from the Carolinas, north through Virginia and West Virginia and into Pennsylvania and Ohio, all key election swing states.
As the Democratic Party’s leading strategist on rural affairs, Mr Saunders believes Mr Obama should ignore those who say a black man can never woo what he calls the “Bubba” vote, when a little light barn dancing might do the trick.
“I think it’s a bunch of crap,” he told The Sunday Telegraph with characteristic relish. “People ask: 'What do you say to these people who won’t vote for a black man’. I say: 'To hell with them’. They are going to vote for a Republicans anyway.”
Instead, Mr Saudners says that if Obama is to win, he will need to emulate Mark Warner and Jim Webb, white Democrats who won senate seats in Virginia, the gateway to the South.
Mr Saunders - nichnamed Mudcat because he enjoys fishing the mudflats near his home in Roanoke - ran both of those campaigns.
“You must respect our culture,” he said. “If you show disrespect for rural culture, we ain’t going to vote for you; it’s just that simple. “He needs to go see Bubba and be himself. Mark Warner did it in 2000 and won in Virginia. Mark said clearly: 'I’m not from your culture, but your culture is cool and I’m having fun with it.’
“You could take Mark Warner to a barn dance and he might get up there and look stupid, but I tell you what: a lot of people liked him because they could tell that he was enjoying himself.”
Mr Obama alienated many poor rural white voters with his ill-judged comments about how they are clinging to God and guns in times of economic hardship.
Mr Saunders believes it is not too late for Mr Obama to turn the corner, so long as he ignores “what I call the Metropolitan Opera wing of the party” - those Democrats who think that “down here we go to meetings at night and talk about who we’re going to lynch, and which gay guy we’re going to beat up.”
He says winning the support of those white voters who once backed Ronald Reagan is vital to Mr Obama’s hopes of victory over Mr McCain.
“Barack Obama is very capable of expanding the base with first time voters, particularly the young people,” he said. “That’s wonderful. But if we get a Reagan Democrat to come home, we get two votes because we just took one away from the Republicans and gave one to us.”
His word is highly valued in Democrat circles: he was recently called in to brief Democrat senators, and has worked for John Edwards, the former candidate for the nomination who has recently endorsed Mr Obama. The likely nominee is now making overtures to him as well.
He says: “I’m the best Democratic rural strategist in America. I’m also the worst because I’m the only one.” Mr Saunders thinks Obama must devote time, resources and a message that embraces his faith, respect for gun rights and tax breaks for companies that relocate in rural America, if he is to be successful.
“He’s going to have to get the right message. He’s going to have to be out in rural America so people can get to know him. He’s going to have to put the resources in. If he does that, he’s going to beat John McCain’s ass. And you can quote me on that."
Mr Saunders also urges Mr Obama to resist what insiders say is now intensive lobbing by Bill Clinton to persuade Mr Obama to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate.
Despite her success with blue collar voters, he thinks she would be a disaster. “The 51 per cent of Americans that don’t like her, they don’t come from New York, they don’t come from California or Illinois or Massachusetts - the traditional Democratic states. They’re all in red (Republican) states and swing states. I wouldn’t put her on the ticket.”
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/mymontana1/gGCjnn
NEW YORK -- Do white right-wing preachers have it easier than black left-wing preachers? Is there a double standard?
The political explosion around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was inevitable, given Wright's personal closeness to Barack Obama and the outrageous rubbish the pastor has offered about AIDS, Sept. 11 and Louis Farrakhan.
After Wright's bizarre and narcissistic performance at the National Press Club on Monday, Obama would have looked weak and irresolute had he not denounced him. But if there was a moment of courage in this drama, it was not Obama's condemnation of Wright but his earlier and now much-criticized effort to avoid a complete break with his unapologetic pastor.
In March, Obama tried to explain the anger in the black community and insisted that "to condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."
In light of this racial gap, it's worth pondering why white, right-wing preachers who make ridiculous and sometimes shameful statements usually emerge with their influence intact.
The catalogue goes back to Bailey Smith, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Speaking at a 1980 religious convention that was also addressed by Ronald Reagan, Smith declared that "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew."
Reagan later asserted that he thought Jewish prayers were answered, but he was less than definitive. "Everyone can make his own interpretation of the Bible," the Gipper said, "and many individuals have been making differing interpretations for a long time."
Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Jerry Falwell, appearing on Pat Robertson's "700 Club," declared: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
Robertson replied: "Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And the top people, of course, is the court system."
To their credit, many conservatives condemned Falwell and Robertson. The ministers backed away from their words, but Falwell's retraction was, at best, partial. "When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture," Falwell insisted, "the result is not good."
What's telling is that neither preacher lost sway in Republican circles. Before Falwell's death last year, John McCain actively courted his support, and Rudy Giuliani, one of the heroes of Sept. 11, welcomed Robertson's endorsement of his own candidacy. "His advice is invaluable," Giuliani said.
And, of course, there is the endorsement of McCain by the Rev. John Hagee, founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, who has called the Catholic Church "the great whore of Babylon" and "the anti-Christ."
It's entirely true that Wright's foolishness is a bigger deal because of his long-standing relationship with Obama. That's the view of John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri and an Episcopal priest who was here for a conference on religion and politics.
But in an interview, Danforth said that for a long time the role of the religious right in Republican politics "did not get enough attention," partly because so much of its activity occurred out of public view. "The way that it works is to get the people listening to you very angry," he said, "and you kind of whisper in their ears."
The Rev. William Danaher, a professor at the General Theological Seminary here, argued that left-wing preachers who are black draw more fire because their critique of American society tends to be more fundamental.
"The left black preacher is challenging the social structures that everyone lives in," Danaher said. "The white preachers on the right don't challenge these structures. Instead, they talk about issues of personal morality and individual behavior."
None of this absolves Wright. Allen Dwight Callahan, one of the nation's leading African American scripture scholars, argued on the Web site of PBS's "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" that "prophets of old didn't announce their prophetic prerogatives at press conferences and press clubs" and that Wright "is wrong to wrap his recent media attention in the mantle of the prophetic tradition."
Exactly right. Now the question is whether we will be just as tough on false prophets who happen to be white and right-wing.
In the past week, the media sharks have been swimming around Barack Obama, the Republican vultures and their surrogates in the Clinton campaign flying overhead ready to devour. What has been Obama's reaction? Calm, thoughtful, reasoned responses.
He has not lost his cool. He has looked positively presidential. He hasn't threatened to wipe another country and all of its innocent men women and children off the map, as Clinton has, either.
He has responded to the Wright shitstorm in a proper and dignified manner...just the opposite of the snarling, hate-filled attacks on him. And the attacks are coming from all sides. Why do you think that is?
It is because he has offered hope instead of fear, reasoned proposals for dealing with the problems we face, and a realistic perception of the country and the world.
I know many of us have been despairing one minute and angry the next as the onslaught has escalated. We are up against evil, let's face it. The powers that rule will do anything to prevent change, and I mean anything.
I stayed away from the 24 hour news channels for a day and found myself thinking that their aggregate audience, if applied to one prime-time sitcom or cop show would cause that sitcom or cop show to be cancelled inside of a month. Most people don't watch them. They are a closed circle. One Obama has stepped outside of.
Compare the two news conferences we saw today, the angry, petulant, inarticulate, lie-filled Bush performance vs. Obama on Wright. Which guy looked presidential to you?
Americans made the mistake of voting for a dope they could have a beer with. Many are making the same mistake with Clinton. Obama's cool cuts through all the bullshit. He is calm and reassuring. He doesn't pander. He looks presidential.
Listen to the new talk show "D'Antoni and Levine" featuring me and Huffington Post contributor Art Levine this Thursday 3:30pm PT at BlogTalkRadio. It'll be archived.
A group of Obama's Jewish supporters are raising money for a supportive ad in the New York Times, according to a copy of an email from an Obama backer, Chicago lawyer Jack Levin.
"A group of Jewish Americans all across the U.S. believe Barack Obama would make the best president and hence are in the process of preparing a full-page New York Times ad -- to be signed by all of us who would like to be included -- showing the U.S. Jewish community?s widespread support for Barack," Levin writes, adding that the ad's sponsors will be known as "American Jewish Patriots."
The need for such an ad is a mark of Obama's continuing struggle to secure the allegiance of Jewish voters -- typically a solidly Democratic group -- in the face of often inchoate concerns, urban legends, and viral emails that he's worked hard to rebut.
Full email after the jump.
From: Jack Levin To: Jack Levin Sent: Thursday, May 1, 2008 12:25:53 PMSubject: Obama New York Times advertisementA group of Jewish Americans all across the U.S. believe Barack Obama would make the best president and hence are in the process of preparing a full-page New York Times ad -- to be signed by all of us who would like to be included -- showing the U.S. Jewish community?s widespread support for Barack.We would like you to join us by (1) agreeing to have your name (and home town) listed in the ad and/or (2) by contributing between $500 and $5,000 towards the cost of the ad.So please now notify either me (email address above) or Nancy Grant (vascodegama@comcast.net) that:(1) Yes, include my name (and home town) in the ad, and/or(2) I agree to contribute $______ (maximum per donor is $5,000, which amount is separate from the $2,300 maximum primary and $2,300 general election donations to Barack), or I am sending my check, payable directly to New York Times, to Nancy Grant at 429 Provident Avenue, Winnetka, IL 60093.If you would prefer to wait until you see the draft ad (which is in preparation and when published will appear under the umbrella name American Jewish Patriots), please so notify Nancy or me and we will send the draft to you as soon as ready.Please help us show our community?s solidarity with Barack by responding ASAP.
